Transparency and accountability in the management of natural resources remain major challenges facing DR Congo. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has come back to encourage the Congolese authorities to put an end to the opacity surrounding the management of natural resource contracts, which is in violation of legal and regulatory texts. Four main files could be put back on the table.
« The 2011 decree requiring the Government to publish all mining, oil and forestry contracts has not been fully implemented. Audited financial statements of certain government enterprises are not publicly available. The IMF will conduct a governance assessment mission in October, « warned the directors who met in Council on August 26, 2019.
Clearly, the approach of the International Monetary Fund is to enhance transparency and accountability in the current management of natural resources to avoid the mistakes of the past.
Hence, the scope of the directors’ recommendation for the public auction of mining assets, the publication of all mining contracts, the disclosure of the real ownership of contractors and the publication of the certified financial statements of state-owned enterprises.
It also means fighting corruption to consolidate growth prospects. For the IMF, the Congolese authorities should accelerate the adoption of the anti-corruption law and the law establishing an independent anti-corruption commission.
Successful advocacy of civil society?
This position of the IMF’s Executive Board appears to be a direct response to the plea of 34 civil society organizations in the DR Congo. In a letter to the IMF Managing Director last May, on the occasion of the Article IV consultation mission with the Government, these structures called on the Fund to focus on four natural resource issues.
- The « opaque » transactions of parastatal enterprises including Gécamines;
- The perception of CMG royalties by Dan Gertler’s companies as well as the non-publication of the contracts surrounding these transactions;
- Non-transparent negotiation, management and development of contracts for the Inga 3 hydroelectric site;
- And lastly, the sale of shares of the State to a private entity in the framework of the project of construction of the hydroelectric dam of Busanga by SICOHYDRO in the province of Lualaba to supply the SICOMINES.
In addition, the 34 civil society organizations urged the IMF to recommend to the Government the audit for greater transparency and accountability on these issues. And as a means of pressure, the Fund should make it « one of the sine-qua-non-conditions for any support for the state budget. »
As a reminder, it was on December 9, 2012 that the IMF suspended the last three disbursements of a $ 560 million credit program for the DR Congo as part of a plan concluded in 2009.
The lack of transparency in the agreement by Gecamines, the Congolese state-owned company, sold its shares of a mining company to Straker International, a US-based Virgin Islands group, a well-known tax haven, was one of the main reasons.
For this Bretton Woods institution, there was talk of strict conditionality of transparency in the mining industries that was not respected.
Eric TSHIKUMA